Japan's NTT Docomo, Dai Nippon launch e-book service

The new venture, 2Dfacto, will on Wednesday open a Japanese online bookstore with an initial 20,000 titles, including books and manga comics, for users of smartphones and e-book readers marketed by NTT Docomo, the companies said.

The venture is set to expand to 100,000 titles over the next few months, including new books, magazines, newspapers and e-books embedded with music and video content, the companies said.

2Dfacto is in talks with "bk1", DNP's online retailer of printed books, and its physical bookstore chains Maruzen, Junkudo and Bunkyodo, to join forces and form a service selling digital and paper publications, they said.

"The result would be a truly digital/physical hybrid network comprising an online store for e-books, an online store for printed books and physical stores for printed books," the companies said in a statement.

Under the plan, the network's website would offer recommendations based on previous purchases from all three types of bookstores, network-wide loyalty points and an e-bookshelf to view network-wide purchases.

Other special functions planned to be launched this year will enable users to read the same e-book on multiple devices and share bookmarks and marked information among multiple devices, the statement said.

(c) 2011 AFP